Fall was made for pregnant women; also, I just picked up a Twizzler off the floor with my toes and ate it

The last couple of days have been absolutely beautiful. Sunny skies, cool breezes--perfect for a 27-weeks pregnant woman who, by the end of the night, is lounging around her apartment in a tank top and undies. I knew this baby business would crank up my temperature a bit, but holy crap, people, I am hot all the time. The air is on 24/7, I need a fan to sleep, and it's probably time to abandon my tanks altogether, seeing as there's no possibility of them covering my belly now, so all they do is get tucked beneath Thing One and Thing Two like a second bra, thus showing off the glorious stretch marks currently spidering below my belly button.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, Luke is quite lucky to be married to a sexpot like me.

As usual, the level of activity in our household is high. This weekend was spent running errands, cleaning the apartment, and making another trip to Babies R Us to change our registry a bit. After reading your comments and doing some research, I decided to remove the Medela pump and all its essentials from my registry and instead rent a hospital-grade pump for the first few weeks after the baby's birth, while I'm getting used to the whole feeding-a-person-with-your-boobs thing. If all goes well and I need to buy a pump, I'll probably go with an Ameda one, which seems to be a favorite among online moms and is also not three hundred and twenty dollars. Always a plus.

However, now I'm confused about whether or not I'll even need something as efficient as a double-electric pump, because due to lack of space at the lab, I've been given permission to work more from home. (Translation: good-bye, spacious office, hello, cramped cubicle.) This arrangement will stay in place after my maternity leave, so I'm left wondering how often I'll need to pump to begin with. When I do make an appearance at the office, it'll probably just be to attend a meeting, interview someone for a story, or take care of paperwork; under those circumstances, there's no reason a manual pump wouldn't suit my needs just fine. It's not like I'm this hot-shot executive who puts in twelve-hour days or travels outside a twenty-mile radius.

And...that's enough about my breasts for this week, thank you very much.

Everything else is going well. Tomorrow marks week four of my class, which seems to be moving along at a strong pace, even if I still feel out of my element sometimes. Last week we focused on the idea of community, how communities are built online, and possible issues such communities face. I will be forever indebted to Liza for passing along the link to BlogRhet, a site maintained by women eager to explore issues like identity, inclusion, gender, race, culture, and a slew of other topics that affect us both in the blogosphere and beyond. Students were instructed to select an article from the Web site and talk about it in class, an exercise that turned out to be much more capable of inspiring discussion than the assigned reading. In case you're interested, here are the articles they chose. Some of them are quite lengthy, but if you have the time to go through them, they make for some juicy reading. Especially the comments.

and now for something completely different...

more facebook, with class

Blogging: redefining friendship in the 2.0 world

To Market, To Market We Go

What I Write is Mine, Isn’t It? Blogging, Intellectual Property, and Identity

Race and Ethnicity: It Matters

Lifting the Veil of the Inner Blogologue.

Does Blogging Help You As a Writer?

Am I In, or Am I Out?

I continue to enjoy the writing I do for Parents.com and hope you guys do, too. It's a bit different from my style on this blog, more column-like, I think, but it seems to work well. Whenever I feel guilty about not posting here as much as I'd like, I remind myself that at least there's another place on the Internet where you can subject yourselves to my delusions of grandeur. I am very interested in holding on to this gig after Freka's born, so cross your fingers that my editor ends up feeling the same way.

In other news, Luke and I aren't the only ones in high gear; this baby has stepped it up a notch (or SEVEN) with her movements, and while watching O Brother, Where Art Thou? last night, we spent a good ten minutes just staring at the ripples she made as they rolled across my stomach. She's gotten more active at night, specifically on whichever side I happen to be sleeping on, and throughout the day I'm constantly being jabbed, poked, kicked, etc. Therefore, it's no surprise to me that I'm more tired than ever. It's like I'm reliving my first trimester all over again, when even the simple act of blow-drying my hair left me winded for a good hour afterwards. Working from home is extra delicious right now, because on those days, all I do is shower and throw on pajama clothes. No mousse, no gel, no make-up, just tied-dyed shirts, a comb-through and a ponytail--you know, to really show off the pimples taking over my neck--and I'm good to go.

I know, I know, again with the hotness.

If the physical toll of carrying this child weren't enough to knock me out, sorting through our finances as we get ever closer to losing one of our incomes would definitely do the trick. Last night I took a quick inventory of what we had stashed away in the bank, money that was on the way, bills that need to be completely eliminated before December (GMAC, I'M TALKING TO YOU), and expenses our savings account will be responsible for, like life insurance and cloth diapers and eye exams and a Roth IRA for Luke and possibly our wedding photos because if we don't order them now I'm afraid we'll never do it and holy crap, I guess we won't be getting that 3D ultrasound after all.

Parents editor, did I ever tell you how pretty you are? Your hair, it is like gold!

Comments

[Brooke]

Wow I'm the first comment! Woohoo I love you sexpot! lol Are you really going to use cloth diapers?

[Liza]

So glad I could help! And I'm so glad your students found such interesting posts to discuss.

Good luck with all the baby gear decisions. I know it feels like you need to have Everything Ready before Freke arrives, but it isn't really true.

And IMO, you need a hand pump whether or not you get an electric. Sometimes electrics break! Haunt the Internet for a new Avent manual. They retail around $50, but you can probably beat that by $10-$15 with patience and bargain hunting. Google products has a new one listed right now for $37.50.

[Audrey]

That's great news that you'll get to work from home so much! Hooray for flexible jobs!

[eva]

I hear you on that internal furnace that is pregnancy. Every night Brad huddles under the duvet because we (read - I) just have to sleep with the fan on its top speed. And I still wake up sweating at 4am! I loved the Blogrhet link - it's getting added to my links list tonight for sure. I'm not really white even, but HOLY CRAP did those blogs make me realize how many assumptions I make about the appearances of fellow bloggers. Mainly that anyone who writes well is cute and thin and athletic and a million other silly characteristics that TOTALLY don't affect someone's ability to write well. A big THANKS to you for that amazing link!

[Lindsey]

Even that post made me feel tired for you! It sounds like you've got a lot going on, girlfriend, but working from home sounds divine!

Fingers crossed that you get to keep your Parents gig post-pregnancy!

[Becca]

It is so much fun to read about your pregnancy! There are so many things I have already forgotten about. One is that Ryan found me sexier than ever no matter what I had on or didn't have on or what my skin looked like. It was wild.

You may have already found this site, but here is a good place to find good quality, clean used cloth diapers:

http://www.diaperpin.com/forum08/forum_topics.asp?FID=29

I've bought from there successfully many times and you can save a lot of money.

So great about your new work arrangement!

[Christina]

May I make a suggestion? I checked with my provider of my home owners insurance to run an auto quote for me, $410 less per year plus a discount on my existing policy of 85!! Huge- I know you are renting but if you have renters with a different co. than your auto give them a call.. You never know where you can find "extra" money! :)
Hang in there with the discomfort but smile on the days you dont have to wiggle into real pants! What a blessing.
At this point Im wearing yoga pants to work on fridays, i swear I get more done when my circulation is allowed to flow freely!

[daddy d]

Fall is a great time of the year. The trees will have a lot of color. It is not hot any more out side.

Everything is moving along. Yea! The active baby is really neat.

[Marilyn]

I would strongly consider sticking with an electric pump (and possibly a double one) if you can manage because it makes a WORLD of difference. Not only do you escape those pesky hand cramps from the manual pumps, but you get SO MUCH more milk in a short amount of time. I found the difference to be night and day. Definitely think renting a pump is a great idea, we did that and it worked great. :)

[Jilt]

I'm so thankful that I had Pumpkin before the hot weather hit - he was a June baby. I could've never gone through a hot St. Louis summer while pregnant. I was wearing tank tops in the middle of winter, keeping the fan on high, and still sweating like a pig. I feel your (hot) pain, Frema!

[Molly]

Do you remember that scene from Father of the Bride, Part II (shut up) where George is running around the house in a winter coat and gloves? That was my family when I was pregnant with Jack. Our heat bills early that winter were at an all time low, and then just weeks after I had the baby, I couldn't believe the frigid temps I had subjected my family to. Just now, almost two years later, the feeling in KJ's little toes is finally returning.

[VirginiaGal]

"Thing One and Thing Two" Snort.

Hurray for comfortably working from home! And I'm impressed that you can do it - I so need the change of location as a mental clue that I should be doing work I get paid for (*though this is written at work, ahem) instead of just lounging around hoping that the magical work completion fairy will come around and wave her magic wand. And why is it that fairies are always referred to in the female gender? Tangent. Sorry.

Ok, back to work it is!

[Jessie]

This entry made me laugh multiple times. I'm amazed at how, uncomfortable as you sound, you can still dazzle us all with your wit.

The working from home thing is awesome. I'm hoping to get that perk when my little one comes, too.

[Rachel]

My head is spinning from reading all that. Congrats on the Twizzler. It's amazing how a pregnant belly teaches you how to use other ways to get things, lol.

Alyssa was a VERY active baby in utero. Very. Not to scare you or anything, but that activness? Has only escalated. From day one she was a mover. And, now, as a toddler, OMG.

[Isabel]

Dude, this post was jammed packed. I loved it.

(and I'm super duper thrilled about you working from home. Good for you!!)

[Silly Hily]

Re: Molly's comment...haha, poor KJ.
I'm not sure if you were reading me or not but I remember being pregnant and blogging about how f-ing hot it was in my office. The air in the building was all sorts of screwed up and it was literally like 85 in the office which you now know translates to 95 when pregnant. I was miserable.
Um, the title of this? No you didn't? :-)
And you have the green light to work from home a lot? How awesome is that!?

[Joanne]

God, the hot is awful. I hated to blow dry my hair when I was pregnant the first time, my poor husband was miserable, living with me. I am going to be super pregnant with this one in the winter, I'm looking forward to not wearing a coat!

I just wanted to say how much I love my Ameda double electric pump. I hardly ever use the double part of it, though, I like to pump and do other stuff (like surf the internet) so I like to have one hand free. But I just wanted to say how much I like my Ameda. I had a manual pump at first and I was amazed at how much more productive I was with the electric. You're smart to wait and see because you really won't know until you start, and why waste the money on something that might not be ideal?

The working from home thing is great - I wish more employers would not just allow, but encourage it. I think it could go a long way to solving the gas crisis, I swear.